1. Russell Westbrook
It just isn’t a great fit, y’all. The Los Angeles Lakers have time to figure it out and they absolutely have to figure out how they can succeed with Russell Westbrook in LA. If the Lakers don’t figure it out then they will be sent back to the dark ages for years to come.
Some fans might look at the counting stats as defense of Westbrook. While it seems that most fans realize that the fit is not great, there certainly is a contingent of Westbrook apologists. Sure, he gets close to a triple-double every night but he is not helping the Lakers win basketball games.
Westbrook is one of the eight players on the roster that has a negative BPM, which is inexcusable considering the circumstances. This is a former MVP that the Los Angeles Lakers are paying $44 million this season and $47 million this season. They cannot get below-average play out of someone who is making over $90 million in two years.
The Lakers put all of their eggs in one basket by trading for Westbrook in the offseason. The move was ridiculed at the time and any critics of the deal are absolutely correct thus far.
The bright side of the trade, back then, seemed to be that Westbrook would help the Lakers win games in the regular season because of his effort every single night. In theory, he would allow LeBron to have a smaller workload to stay fresh in the playoffs.
It is not working in the regular season so should we really expect it to work in the playoffs?